Re: Last Call: <draft-resnick-on-consensus-05.txt> (On Consensus and Humming in the IETF) to Informational RFC

["Fred Baker (fred)" <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 8, 2013, at 1:56 PM, S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>
 wrote:

> I am not sure whether hums are for a starting point or not.  It can be argued in different ways, for example, see Section 4. Humming helps to get a sense of the room without people making a decision under duress. 

Personally, I think focusing on Jeff Case's hums is missing the point. The point is the meaning of the term "rough consensus", and how that plays out in working group process. The manner of measurement is a secondary issue.

To my small and somewhat naive mind, the difference between rough consensus on a topic and a vote on the same topic is something about winners and losers. In a purely political process, when a set of parties vote on something and the preponderance (by some definition of "preponderance") say something, the views of the losing set of parties are deemed irrelevant. In IETF process, and hopefully in any technical process, there is understanding that the parties who disagree may have valid reasons to disagree, and a phase of negotiation. When we talk about "rough consensus", I understand it to mean - and would like to believe that we all understand it this way - that we investigate the reasons for disagreement, perhaps discover that some of them are valid, and address those issues to the satisfaction of those who raised them. As a result, the ultimate solution, even though it may not be the specific solution we would all have designed or selected, is one that in fact addresses all known issues. While we may not all agree, we don't disagree.

I think the document on the table tries to address that. There are points of phraseology that I might express differently, but it's close enough that I don't disagree.